Congress campaign for resignation of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in Parliament today came to a naught as the minister made a spirited defence and was backed by the government, which said a "mountain was made out of what was not even a mole hill".
Lok Sabha, on the penultimate day of the Monsoon session which has been virtually washed out, took up a discussion on Lalit Modi issue and saw spirited arguments and counter arguments between treasury and opposition benches.
Congress, which had moved the Adjournment Motion for the discussion, rubbished Swaraj's argument that she had helped Lalit Modi on "humanitarian" grounds, with Rahul questioning as to how much money the minister had received in lieu.
Rahul, who spoke briefly, said IPL was the "Centre" of black money and the "symbol" of black money was Lalit Modi whom the government was trying to save.
As Narendra Modi was not present in the House during the discussion, the Congress Vice President said the Prime Minister "does not have guts" to face the House.
The motion moved by Congress was defeated by a voice vote in the absence of the main opposition party which staged a walkout when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley began to reply.
Hitting back at Congress for targeting Swaraj in a sustained manner, Jaitley said she had been made a "scapegoat of a pretext" as the main reason for disrupting Parliament was to "sabotage the Indian growth story" by stalling reform legislations like GST.
He ruled out Swaraj's resignation, saying she had done nothing wrong and the Congress had created a "cloud" of a "scandal" which did not exist.
Making a scathing attack on Rahul, Jaitley said the Congress Vice President is "an expert without knowledge" and asked him not to "make a monkey out of the country" by holding up an entire session of Parliament.
"A mountain is being made out of what is not even a mole hill," he said, while insisting that the former UPA government had done nothing in concrete terms to bring back Lalit Modi.
He also hit out at Rahul for questioning the role of Swaraj's lawyer daughter, saying, "there are still some honest people whose children have to work for a living. There are other people who, for generations in politics, have not worked for a living. They have learnt the art of living comfortably without working."
Earlier, Swaraj, while intervening in the debate, tore into Congress, saying it had helped Bofors accused Ottavio Quattrocchi and Bhopal gas leak accused Warren Anderson in fleeing India and roped in Rajiv Gandhi in this regard.
She specifically responded to Rahul's charge that she had got money to help Lalit Modi, telling him to ask his "mamma" as to "how much money had been taken from Quattrocchi" and "why did 'daddy' (Rajiv Gandhi) get released the killer of 15,000 people (in Bhopal gas leak)," an apparent reference to Anderson.
